Said Madison, “Religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator… can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.”

Atatürk had great contempt for all religion, and tried to extinguish it. He claimed that his only standard was the good of Turkey.

He always expressed a profound contempt for the Roman Catholic Church, which returned the affection by putting all D’Annunzio’s work on the Index of Prohibited Books.

"The theology of the average colored church is basing itself far too much upon 'hell and damnation,'" wrote DuBois. Anti-rational dogma repelled him, and he ceased participating in organized worship as a young adult.

Even the “Catholic Encyclopedia” admits, "His attitude of mind towards religious truth was that of a rationalist." To Bruno it would have been easier for him to change his sex than to change his mind.

"The spirit of dogmatic theology poisons everything it touches," said Bentham. "There is no pestilence in a state like a zeal for religion, independent of morality."

"I was born a heretic," Anthony said. "I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows."

Ruskin never went to church, but he gave away most of his wealth in founding a charity called the Guild of St. George in the 1870s.

Wrote biographer John Forster, who knew Dickens, "He had rejected the Church of England and detested the influence of its bishops in English politics."

Hamilton wrote, "The bible teaches that a father may sell his daughter for a slave, that he may sacrifice her purity to a mob, and that he may murder her, and still be a good father and a holy man."